New Hate Outburst.

Taihape Daily Times, 8 March 1918, Page 7

New Hate Outburst.

“SVE2TOAU Or .THE .NATIONS.”

Doubtless under the influence of the hammering their troops are receiving in Flanders, the Germans are being treated to a flood of literary productions vilifying England (said Mr. F. W. Wile, in the “Daily Mail” recently.)

In the semi-official “Cologne Gazette’ ’ a novelist named Karl Bleibtreu has begun a series of articles entitled “The Truth About England.” In “Voss’s Gazette” an essay on “England, the Svegali of the Nations” appeals under the .signature of Lieut-Colonel Hedwarth von Bittenfeld. This officer was German military attache in the United States and Mexico from 1910 to 1914 and later the head of the “American Press Department” at the General Staff in Berlin. It relates how the United States was “mesmerised” into going to war with Germany.

The sort of “truth” about England that Herr Bleibtrcu tends to purvey may be judged from the following extract from his opening article: “If a Bulwer Lytton were to-day to write an impartial work on ‘'England and the English’ he would come to the same conclusion as before—to the indignation of our demagogues—•that Prussia is Europe’s ‘most liberal’ country. Lloyd George and Wilson before the war were inclined to admit this as far as social reform was concerned. Their present day speeches are not the expression of their real sentiments. These two full-fledged Imperialists, the English and the' Yankees, always sacrifice domestic to foreign policy. How can the England which elevates Kipling to the dignity of a national bard talk about the develpomcnt of healthy democracy—Kipling who outdoes everything that ever went before in glorification of British militarv and official power?

“Whore Jingoism is holding such orgies as never were, there can be no such thing as development of internal freedom. Even in Amricanisation, which is taking the obnoxious form in England of the triumph of plutocracy over aristocracy, pursues Imperialistic ain:s. America and England have now formed a trust to enable so-called Anglo-Saxonism to exploit the other and inferior portions of the world for their mutual benefit. ”

Lieut.-Colonel Hedwarth’s diatribe s a sheer explosion of Prussian mili-

ary wrath over American interven

tion, which is attributed to the “hypnotic” influence of “England, the Svengali of ISTations.” He writes:

“The present, disqrdercd state of world opinion about. Germany is a triumph of lies, such as history has ■never known before. The instigator of this colossal chaos in international thought is England, the model and master of her Allies in this as in all the other arts of darkness. The countries and peoples which have succumbed to her suggestion have fallen victimss to blindnes and madness. England resembles the demoniac figure who was the hero of Du Maurier’s “Trilby,” the conscienceless mesmerist Svengali, who converted his victims into hopeless tools and robbed them of their individuality so that they had to think and feel precisely as their tyrant willed. As a Svengali of the nations England has contrived by dint of monstrous mass-sug-gestion to confound the countries allied with her and to impose her greedy ideas upon the world’s brain.”